2013 Good Neighbour Award nominee: Lynn Valley Lions

Do you know someone in Lynn Valley who would make a good candidate for this year’s Good Neighbour Award? Please send us your story about the person in our community who has made our world a better place, in ways large or small (whether they live next door to you or not!) Over the upcoming season of peace and goodwill, we will share our favourites on the website and draw from amongst them the recipient of the 2013 Good Neighbour Award and prize package. Details are here; deadline for entry is Wednesday, December 18. We look forward to hearing from you!

Principal says Lions deserve recognition for support

I would like to nominate the Lynn Valley Lions for their considerable donations of time and support to our school….  they really go the extra mile to support community events and fundraising for our students.

Thank you to each and every Lynn Valley Lion!

– submitted by Deborah Wanner, Lynn Valley Elementary School principal

2013 Good Neighbour Award nominee: LV United Church

Do you know someone in Lynn Valley who would make a good candidate for this year’s Good Neighbour Award? Please send us your story about the person in our community who has made our world a better place, in ways large or small (whether they live next door to you or not!) Over the upcoming season of peace and goodwill, we will share our favourites on the website and draw from amongst them the recipient of the 2013 Good Neighbour Award and prize package. Details are here; deadline for entry is Wednesday, December 18. We look forward to hearing from you!

Church welcomed neighbourhood newcomer

When I was new in the community, Lynn Valley United Church welcomed me with open hearts and friendly smiles.  The church also opened up the choir to the community (which I heartily joined, as Mary the director is fun and I loved the music) as well as a monthly drum circle facilitated by the talented and fearless leader, Lyle Povah (which I also participated in).  It is indeed a musical environment extraordinaire with the likes of soaring singers such as Reverend Blair Odney, and a finger-twinkling accompanist/pianist named Matt who will blow you away!

In fact, there are numerous wondrous activities year-round for neighbourhood folks of all kinds, including (and not limited to):  the fabulous funny and talented Friday Night Live shows (a different version of laughter therapy); the famous, frolicking Fall Fair (truly!); Lynn Valley Days where we were literally “Singing in the Rain!”; the lovely Lynn Valley Festival of Trees – I’m a tree lover and hugger!; and the annual, cozy Christmas neighbourhood party with secular and spiritual music, carols, cookies, and crafts.  A taste of community…there’s something for everyone!

– submitted by Elly Stornebrink

2013 Good Neighbour Award nominee: Gord Trousdell

Do you know someone in Lynn Valley who would make a good candidate for this year’s Good Neighbour Award? Please send us your story about the person in our community who has made our world a better place, in ways large or small (whether they live next door to you or not!) Over the upcoming season of peace and goodwill, we will share our favourites on the website and draw from amongst them the recipient of the 2013 Good Neighbour Award and prize package. Details are here; deadline for entry is Wednesday, December 18. We look forward to hearing from you!

From tapping syrup to shovelling snow, Gord is there to help

I’d like to nominate our neighbour, Gord Trousdell, for the good neighbour award. Besides always being a cheerful encounter with interesting conversation, Gord is always willing to help out.

One of our first experiences of Gord’s kindness was during the snow of 2006 when our car got stuck; hearing the whirling tires Gord came running up the street with shovel in hand reading to dig and push until the car was free. To this day, I imagine him wearing a cape while running to rescue us.

Little did we know that this was one of many times Gord would be there to lend a helping hand. Throughout the years, Gord delivered kettle corn to our children’s birthday party (made by his equally fabulous wife, Lil), helped make our deck, helped shovel snow off our roof, babysit our kids; the list is endless.

Not only is he generous with his time, but he is also generous with his stuff. Gord likes to share. We trade tools, lawn mowers, etc. Gord truly has a community spirit which includes sharing goods within our community so that we may all benefit and have access to things that we may not own.

Gord also has an incredible wealth of knowledge that he is always willing to humbly share. He’s given us guidance on household maintenance, bee keeping, food harvesting…again the list goes on.

To top it off, we really enjoy the Trousdell family; they are lovely and interesting people with which to spend time. Simply walking down our street can be an enjoyable social outing. I truly believe that the Trousdell family help make our street an inviting community in which I have developed many true friendships.

Just yesterday, Gord was over to tap our maple trees with my children so that we can share the syrup. We feel truly blessed to have a neighbour like Gord. He makes our street a better place to live and significantly contributes to the genuine community feel of our street and the sense that Lynn Valley is our home.

2013 Good Neighbour nominee: Kathrin Wallace

Do you know someone in Lynn Valley who would make a good candidate for this year’s Good Neighbour Award? Please send us your story about the person in our community who has made our world a better place, in ways large or small (whether they live next door to you or not!) Over the upcoming season of peace and goodwill, we will share our favourites on the website and draw from amongst them the recipient of the 2013 Good Neighbour Award and prize package. Details are here; deadline for entry is Wednesday, December 18. We look forward to hearing from you!

Longtime neighbour is a friend and inspiration

Kathrin (and her husband, Bruce and her two kids) lived opposite my family in the mid-eighties in a townhouse complex on Cedar Village Crescent. We spent many fun-filled years watching the kids grow up and celebrating events ranging from family birthdays to block parties to Christmas dinners.

Kathrin is a very community-oriented person who as a strata council member implemented positive changes within the townhouse complex. Later, as PAC president at Eastview Elementary School, she was instrumental in bringing about the creation of a forest walk near the school, the installation of new playground equipment, and the building of a walk-way from the adjacent care facility, Cedarview Lodge, to the school. This enabled seniors to easily walk over to the school and participate in such functions as the Remembrance Day ceremony.

About 10 years ago, Kathrin and her family moved to a house on Greylynn Crescent and my family moved to Viewlynn Drive a few years later. We have enjoyed being neighbours and friends for well over 20 years.

We look after each other’s pets when on vacation, have shared a tent trailer and various home and garden implements, exchanged flower and vegetable cuttings and borrowed an egg or a cup of milk when needed. Kathrin and her family always include my family for Christmas dinners, Easter egg hunts or other social functions. As a neighbour and friend Kathrin is an inspiration, always willing to lend a hand or an ear and I feel truly blessed that we are so near.

Thank you for entering Kathrin’s name in the draw for your Good Neighbour Award 2013.

– submitted by Andrea Winterbottom

(Editor’s note: and thank you to Andrea for contributing five complimentary Joyful Chakra Yoga sessions to our Good Neighbour prize pack! If you have a local treat you’d like to contribute, please let us know at [email protected].)

Book explores personal experiences of death

Bury the Dead: Stories of Death and Dying, Resistance and Discipleship has been a labour of love for the Rev. Laurel Dykstra. An experienced writer as well as recently ordained Anglican priest in North Vancouver, Laurel edited this anthology of first-hand  experiences of death, from an American hospice worker’s reflections to the memoir of a family who cared for a mother at home, taking unto themselves those tasks usually delegated to healthcare professionals and undertakers.

The B.C. launch of Bury the Dead will take place Thursday, December 5 at 7 p.m. at the Lynn Valley Library. The launch is the first in the Really Important Events series sponsored by the North Vancouver Anglican-Lutheran region, which will feature presentations and workshops on end-of-life issues.

People are thirsty for these conversations, it seems; a recent ‘Death Cafe’ held in North Vancouver drew an overflow crowd and a waiting list to boot. LynnValleyLife editor Peggy Trendell-Jensen spoke to Laurel about her book, and the need people have to share stories of this kind.

How did you come to edit this book on death? What is its reason for being?

This book began with a phone conversation. I was a mentor in a program for young Christian activists, and one of the young women I was mentoring, Lydia Wylie-Kellerman, was struggling to write about her mother who was diagnosed with brain cancer when Lydia was twelve and died when she was 19.

Meanwhile I was struggling after the deaths of three women I know who had died in the Downtown Eastside. Reflecting later on the conversation, I realized that the two of us were actually connected to a network of individuals and communities on the radical Christian left who had, for many years, in hospice rooms, war zones, and prison cells, been attending to the work of death and dying. I sent out an exploratory e-mail to some other likely suspects, asking, “What if we made a collection of stories about dying and community, would you write something?” The response was immediate; by next morning six people had promised to write, and three had attached sample chapters.

Did your concept of death evolve over the course of editing the book?

In starting the project I imagined that it would be cathartic. I thought I would be able to let go of some of the stories of death, particularly urban poverty-related deaths, that I had been carrying for years. But instead, contributors began sending these amazing stories of their own beloved dead, so instead of putting down my own story I found myself picking up theirs.

My feelings and ideas about death did not change over the course of editing the book, but I found a tremendous hunger for people to hear and tell these stories. Whenever I talk about the project, I am approached by people who want to talk about death. Care for the dying and the dead is outsourced to professionals and removed from our homes and families. Grief is individualized and something you are expected to “move through.” We are not encouraged to ask questions about own connections to, and culpability for, death by poverty, war and even disease.


How did you find your writers?

I began with the circles of activists I know through various peace and justice movements in North America—Occupy, Anti-War, Catholic Worker, Civil Rights – and those connections led to others.

What story or moment(s) in the book do you find especially poignant or thought-provoking?

All of them. Through the somewhat technical work of polishing and editing the book I found that as I worked on it, each contribution was my favourite. And each time I open the book now I think, “Oh, I love this piece.”

That said, there are two things I would highlight:

Several contributors engaged in hospice work talked about what they do as “reverse midwifery” or being “midwives to the dying.”  I find this particularly beautiful and I think it represents language and thinking that will become more and more common.

I am particularly impressed as well by the power of the contributions written by some of the people of colour, and the different ways that they challenge the deathliness of racism.

What are you hoping the book accomplishes?

I think of it as the first in a series of conversations with more and more diverse conversation partners.

What has reaction been from readers to date?

Quite positive—it has been reviewed in Geez magazine and an excerpt has been published in Sojourners. People are hungry for these kinds of stories and a place to tell their own.

How do you hope society changes in its attitudes or actions around death?

I hope that we talk more about it; that we ask who is dying and why, and what we can do about it. And I hope that we take back the care of our loved ones in ways that connect to our cultures and traditions, and in ways that honour the earth.

Would you call this a ‘religious’ book?

The majority of contributors identify as Christian activists, but Jewish, atheist and agnostic friends have read and loved it. The authors talk about God, Jesus, the Bible, Christian social teaching as well as diapers, protest strategies, gun violence and coffin materials. This is not a book that tells you what to believe, but it grapples honestly and painfully with questions of life, death and resurrection –  so in my opinion it is a profoundly religious book.

 

2013 Good Neighbour Nominee: Dana Dykema

Do you know someone in Lynn Valley who would make a good candidate for this year’s Good Neighbour Award? Please send us your story about the person in our community who has made our world a better place, in ways large or small (whether they live next door to you or not!) Over the upcoming season of peace and goodwill, we will share our favourites on the website and draw from amongst them the recipient of the 2013 Good Neighbour Award and prize package. Details are here; deadline for entry is Wednesday, December 18. We look forward to hearing from you!

Busy mom makes time to care for others

I would like to nominate Dana Dykema, an Upper Lynn Valley woman, for the Good Neighbour Award. As you probably know, Chelsea Steyns [Creative Director of the North Shore Academy of Dance] passed away earlier this year from cancer, leaving behind a husband and two sets of twins.

There is a Food For the Family calendar online where you can sign up to provide meals to Chelsea’s family. At least once a month since the calendar was published online, Dana has signed up to provide meals for the Croft family. She is a busy mom with four kids under six(!), but she still finds time to be very active in the community, to volunteer her time, and to provide these meals. She’s a wonderful, understated lady who doesn’t go out of her way to be the center of attention – which is why she deserves to win the Good Neighbour Award!

– Submitted by a friend who asked to remain anonymous

Local musician is Nashville-bound

Turns out that Lynn Valley is en route between South Africa and Nashville, Tennessee. 

At least that’s what Amy Dreyer hopes. Amy wears many hats – she’s here from South Africa as an international development student at SFU and also the worship director of Oasis, Hillside Baptist’s youth worship group. But it’s her singer-songwriter persona that she hopes to take to Nashville in January in order to record a five-song album.

The 19-year-old musician is raising funds towards this goal doing at a coffeehouse concert on Saturday, November 30 at 7:30 p.m. at Hillside Church on Lynn Valley Road. This concert will include original songs and covers, and will also feature other musicians from the area. The $10 tickets are available at the door.

Amy’s classical background in violin and her deep-rooted love for African beats gives her music a unique rhythmic base on which the flowing melodic lines fall. Her music is inspired by artists like Ed Sheeran, John Mayer and Brooke Fraser. Learn more about Amy and listen to her songs here, and come out on November 30 for a relaxing evening for a good cause!

 

 

Nominate Lynn Valley’s Good Neighbour for 2013!

We’ve been looking forward to this all year! It’s finally time to put the call-out for nominations for this year’s Good Neighbour Award.

We loved reading the stories you sent in last year. We heard about animal lovers and faithful housesitters; charity organizers, handyman husbands, and more. The winner, chosen from amongst all these goodhearted folk by random draw, was Rosemary Postlethwaite of Lynn Valley United Church, who was given her Good Neighbour Award at the finale of the Lynn Valley Christmas in LV Village.

So please send us your story about the person in our community who has made our world a better place, in ways large or small. Over the upcoming season of peace and goodwill, we will share our favourites on the website and draw from amongst them the recipient of the 2013 Good Neighbour Award.

This year’s winner will receive a number of local treats, including a gift certificate to the Black Bear Neighbourhood Pub, four tickets to Friday Night Live, a basket of Christmas CDs from Rave-On Studio, yoga passes to Joyful Chakra Yoga, and even a personalized tour of the North Van RCMP station with our favourite press officer, Cpl. Richard De Jong! And the person who nominates the winner will get a handful of Christmas CDs, too!

Please send your story (just a paragraph or two will do, doesn’t have to be fancy) to [email protected] as soon as you can so we can start sharing them. All entries are due by Wednesday, December 18. Please include your name and contact information, as well as that of the person you are nominating. To help us spread the word, please download this poster to stick up at your local school or shop – we’d love to read as many heartwarming stories as possible!

The announcement will be made, and the prize awarded, at this year’s finale of a Lynn Valley Christmas on Sunday, December 22. Our 2012 winner, Rosemary, is shown below with LynnValleyLife sponsor Jim Lanctôt, his daughter Katie, and the Rev. Blair Odney of Lynn Valley United Church. Who will win this year’s award, we wonder…?

photo courtesy Linda Mackie

LV’s building supply landmark closing its doors

Whether you call it the “Irly Building Centre” or still refer to it by its earlier moniker, “Woodstop Building Supplies,” you’ll be sorry to hear this Lynn Valley landmark is shutting down operations.

Trevor Stephenson, the co-owner who founded the store in 1978, told LynnValleyLife that he first went into business in the adjacent lumberyard, which had been abandoned by previous operators. Trevor believes it had been run as a lumberyard since the 1950s; he says a six (not seven!)-digit telephone number is still written on the inside of the warehouse door.

Five years later, Trevor built the building supply store and was joined by recent Argyle Secondary grad John Horsnel, who later became a co-owner of the business.

Over the years, Trevor says they have served many longtime customers; about 80 per cent have been contractors and 20 per cent homeowners. He’s been in business so long, he says, that he’s seen some contractors through their entire career. As for himself, he’s still getting used to the idea of semi-retirement.

“I’m still in denial to some extent,” he says. But he’s warming up to the thought. “The beauty of retirement is the ability to be on your own schedule, not someone else’s. I’m looking forward to that flexibility.” That’s no wonder, considering that Trevor has been up at 5 a.m. for the past 35 or so years, in order to commute from his Port Coquitlam home to be at work by 6:30.

But it won’t be all play, no work. Trevor and John also own North Shore Door, which sells doors, windows, moldings and door hardware from its shop at 103 – 2433 Dollarton. John has been working full-time at that location for the past year, and Trevor intends to lend a hand to help the shop build its brand.

The owners have sold the property to a residential developer, a land use that Trevor feels is a better fit for that corner of Lynn Valley. They plan to close the lumber yard on October 31 (all materials are currently being sold at cost) and he says that from November 1 to December 15 the contents of the building supply sale will also be sold at cost. He hopes to have the business wrapped up by December 31.

Trevor says he’ll definitely miss his customers and the relationships he’s developed through his work. “It’s not a job, it’s a lifestyle,” he notes. He asked LynnValleyLife to pass on his and John’s appreciation to all their longtime customers. “We’re awful thankful for their support over the years.”

Trevor, John and the rest of the Woodstop crew will certainly be missed by Lynn Valleyites, most of whom will never have known their neighbourhood to be without this stalwart landmark. On behalf of the community,  thanks for everything and we’ll see you at North Shore Door!

Nat Bosa a “different cat” on local development scene

LynnValleyLife  likes to profile notable neighbours who play interesting roles in our community. If you’d like to know more about someone who makes a contribution in our neighbourhood, in large ways or small, drop us a line at [email protected].

He tells us he’s outspoken and doesn’t beat around the bush. And with that understatement, Nat Bosa launches into a wide-ranging, hour-long interview that’s peppered with colourful anecdotes, salty language, and bold visions for the future.

Natale (“Nat”) Bosa is the owner of Bosa Development Corporation, which in turn owns Lynn Valley Centre. The company didn’t build the mall – it was purchased some years ago  – but Nat Bosa is looking to rebuild it, in line with North Van District’s Official Community Plan.

Some might think it’s a small-potatoes project for a man whose decades-old company is busy building internationally. But while he acknowledges that his focus now is south of the border, where he’s had a major hand in developing areas of San Diego, San Francisco, and Seattle, he says “I don’t want to overlook [Lynn Valley]…. This is home. It sure would be great to be able to drive by and say ‘I’m glad I did this.’”

Pointing to the widespread popularity of his mixed-use Newport Village development in Port Moody, Nat says that on a slightly smaller scale “we can do that in Lynn Valley. We can be proud. You think I’m doing this for myself? Listen, I’m not a young puppy anymore. I don’t need to do this… we can lease that box that’s there for something, and we’re fine.”

But Nat believes Lynn Valley mall is ripe for change. “Change is good,” he insists. “Let’s put it this way, that area is ready. Let’s change the damn suit. You’ve had the same suit on for 40 years.”

Change, of course, comes easier for some people than for others. But everything about Nat Bosa – his seven bikes, his carefully chosen cars, even his kayaks – indicates that he’s all about forward motion. Even when he was in his teens and 20s, swinging a hammer and framing houses with his brothers, he was known for being fast – “really fast, I can tell you.” Now, with dozens of successful, city-changing developments under his belt, he is known as somewhat of a visionary – a man who can look at bare land, or a run-down area, and see its potential before anyone else can.

Nat is the force behind the look and feel of downtown San Diego, parts of which he started developing in 1998. Is shaping a neighbourhood’s future a big responsibility, we asked him? “Yes,” he replied emphatically, “Big time.” He repeats himself: “Big time. Big time. I have all the finest sites in San Diego. I have them all…. I have a huge responsibility. I want to give them the finest buildings on the West Coast.”

His involvement doesn’t stop at the residential and commercial opportunities he brings to a community. Part of his San Diego commitments included the donation of an art gallery, and, near to his heart, the building of the Nat and Flora Bosa campus of the Monarch School, a place of learning for homeless children that’s the first of its kind in the United States.

Recent examples of his local largesse include a Bosa condominium prize in the current B.C. Children’s Hospital lottery, and funding that made possible the new Bosa Centre for Film and Animation at Capilano University.

“It’s a lot more fun to do that than to make the money,” he says. “I enjoy what I’m doing, but that stuff is really good. Our plan is to give away most of our money…. We want to do a lot of that, my wife and I. That’s what gets us up in the morning. Our kids don’t need us anymore, per se. They’re not kids any more, for starters.”

“The kids” are Jim, Ryan, Jason and Natalie. Jim and Ryan have followed in their father’s footsteps and have their own development companies. Jason is his youngest son, and works with his mother, Flora, who owns the Palladio jewellery store.

Throughout the interview, Nat keeps giving a tip of the hat to the patience displayed by Flora throughout their marriage. Both teenage immigrants from Italy, they met in Vancouver and wed when they were 23 and 19 years old respectively.

How would Flora describe him, we asked? Nat laughed. “ADD plus.” After a pause, he elaborates: “I would say this: I’m a different cat… I’m definitely not the easiest cat to live with. I’m quite strongminded.” He pauses, and gives us another animal analogy. “Let’s just put it this way, I’m not a little poodle on a leash…. I have to give a lot of credit to Flora, to really put up with it.”

His wife tells him that he’s ugly when he’s mad.  “She’s probably correct,” he concedes. But he’s fair, he emphasizes. And what really makes him mad is people who don’t play by the rules.

He relates a story about a long-ago purchase in West Vancouver, a small lot that was already zoned for redevelopment. It didn’t require a public hearing, but the mayor at the time decided to call for one anyway – and got an earful from Nat the next day. “When you see things like this, you gotta stand up,” he tells LynnValleyLife. If a smaller company than his had been faced with such a turn-about, he points out, it could have lost its shirt. “It could destroy people. And I don’t like that.”

He doesn’t ask for or expect concessions from politicians. “I don’t want no favours,” he emphasizes in a strong voice that still bears traces of an Italian accent. “You must understand – every city says one thing: I’m incredibly fair. I just want to be treated equal to everybody else. I don’t want preferential treatment. I don’t need it.”

He just wants to be told the rules, he says, and then he’ll play well within them. That goes for his personal life, too – when building a fence around his West Vancouver backyard, his strict instructions to the contractor were to build it one inch inside the property line.

So Nat was – to put it mildly – frustrated when Bosa’s redevelopment proposals for Lynn Valley Centre were stalled last year. He describes a long history with North Vancouver District that started years ago with an invitation from then-mayor Don Bell to work together on a joint development that would encompass the new library building.  Bosa financed the architectural planning, but Nat says the plug got pulled when Bell left district council to run for federal office.

His development company didn’t get involved again until after the district passed the Official Community Plan, which stipulated heights and densities.  “Now, as long as you come in underneath that, or not exceed that, you think you’re safe,” said Nat. “That’s the way it works. Every jurisdiction in which I work, that’s the way it works. So we go in. We meet with staff, staff was great, the whole works… so we start going.”

The Zellers store in the mall had been purchased by Target, but as North Van District wouldn’t permit the second storey that Target required, Bosa Development knew that option was a non-starter.

“So we bought out Zellers’ lease a year early,” Nat says. “We knew they were going to leave, so we said ‘Let’s get a head start here.’ So that’s what happened. And then all of a sudden the brakes go on.” Controversy among residents had started, and the District decided to once again re-open the Official Community Plan implementation to public feedback.

“I approached Mark [Sager] after I was pretty much exhausted by what was going on in Lynn Valley,” Nat says. He asked Mark to bring his consultative style to garnering feedback that would help a new architect develop plans more in keeping with what the neighbourhood said it wanted.

He says he hired Mark to run with the ball, and Mark – a lawyer and former mayor known for his listening skills –  hasn’t tossed it back to him yet. But what Nat does know about the new plans, he likes. “This here is gentle,” he says, pointing to sketches of the new Lynn Valley Centre concept. “It gives this incredible, real warm feel. It makes you feel good to go there.” He believes that the two, 12-storey buildings that are part of the revamped proposal can exist practically unnoticed by local residents, similar to the manner in which the 16-storey Kiwanis Tower blends into the landscape.

We wondered what someone who so obviously embraces change might, if given the chance, change about himself. “My wife would change all of me,” Nat laughs, but then reflects: “We all have faults. We are all very good at seeing other people’s faults, but we can’t really see our own. “ That said, with whatever faults he may have, he’s had “a hell of a life…. I’ve had a great ride. Everywhere I’ve built, it’s been accepted. Never screwed anybody.”

That’s one piece of wisdom he’s tried to pass on: “I always tell my kids one thing: never step on someone’s toes to advance yourself. Because that’s not how it’s done.”

And if anyone is in any doubt about their faults, Nat suggests they might want to pick up a putter. He advises everyone to play a little golf;  he himself tends to follow each great round with a terrible one. “It’s a humbling game…. When you get upset about a putt that you just missed, you’re getting upset at you – you’re the jerk that missed it! You’re not blaming anybody else, that’s what’s good about it.”

If you wonder how the head of a company with several international developments on the go has time for golf, Nat is quick to credit his team. “I hire the finest people, I pay them well, and I expect the best of them,” he says. He likens himself to an orchestra conductor. “I don’t have many musicians, but we make great music.”

Knowing that his projects are in good hands allows him to avoid the workaholic lifestyle. “If I don’t go by the jobsite,” he notes, “that means they’re doing the right thing.”

He admits, though, that his mind is always active with work-related thoughts. We asked if he could picture an alternate reality for himself, one that didn’t see him entering the construction trade as a young immigrant. The thought, Nat says, has never entered his mind. “[Construction’s] my game. I think I’m pretty good at it and that’s what I like.” He thinks for a moment. “For me to re-invent myself….I think I’d probably be miserable at it. Of course, we adapt… but mind you, [at my age?] I’m at the bottom of the sixth inning.”

He may be turning 69 years old this Christmas Day, but the strength of his parting handshake could make lesser men weep. Our interview time is up, and Nat is out the door into the August sunshine, off to see what the gods of golf have in store for him today.

– Peggy Trendell-Jensen, editor

Mark Sager is inviting Lynn Valley residents to an unveiling of the above-mentioned designs for the proposed Lynn Valley shopping centre redevelopment on Thursday, September 12 at 7 p.m., in the old Zellers premises (access via exterior doors facing Safeway). If you are unable to attend that evening, please contact LynnValleyLife, which is arranging a sneak preview for its LVL Network members. Be sure to drop us a line at [email protected] if you’d like to come!